


Three Alternate Narnias and One That Could Almost Be Canon

by SlowMercury



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Jazz - Freeform, Post-Apocalypse, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2386553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowMercury/pseuds/SlowMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what the title says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Alternate Narnias and One That Could Almost Be Canon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songsmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songsmith/gifts).



> This was written in a bit of a hurry and wasn't beta'd, so if you see something wrong please sing out. It's intended to answer the AU prompt for songsmith, but it may not have as much worldbuilding as the prompt suggested. I hope you like it anyway!

**JAZZ**

All four of the Pevensie children had beautiful voices; they’d practically grown up in the church choir, and Susan had shown a suspicious aptitude for jazz which her parents tried fruitlessly to counter with ballet lessons.

When they tripped through a wardrobe into Narnia, that musical talent came in handy.  Narnia was a land that was born from the song of creation; musicians still had power there. 

This goes a long way towards explaining why the White Witch was defeated by a four part harmony song and dance number.

The battle began with Peter on drums and lead vocals, and Lucy and the Naiads singing back-up.  It was a good initial sally, and they easily routed the enemy’s foot soldiers, a troop of goblin go-go dancers.  Even so, the White Witch almost turned the war around when she donned her horned Viking helmet, picked up a megaphone and hit a pitch that could shatter stone.  Just when all seemed lost, Edmund and Susan swooped in from the wings, Edmund playing some slammin’ saxophone and Susan scat singing an impassioned counterpoint.  By the time their duet ended, even the trees had got up to dance and the frost giants from the Witch’s army demanded an encore.  By the time the children were too tired to give another curtain call some six hours later, the White Witch had slunk away, shamed by their musical might.

The Pevensie siblings were unanimously declared the Kings and Queens of Rhythm and Soul, and they ushered in the Golden Age of Jazz before their return to England.

Of course they had to do it all over again when they visited at the end of the Telmarine invasion.  That’s all right, though.  In Narnia, in the very bones of the world the beat lives on.

 

 

**VIRTUAL REALITY**

When Lucy first told her siblings that _Legends of Narnia_ wasn’t just a virtual reality computer game, that it was real and all the creatures inside it were alive, none of them believed her. 

“It’s just a game,” they told her.  “Don’t be silly, Lucy.”

But it _was_ real.  While the inhabitants of Narnia were digital and not strictly speaking alive, they _were_ self-aware.  _Narnia_ was the cutting edge of AI technology, guaranteed to learn and evolve to better suit its players, and its maker Mr. Aslan had created better than he knew – even the trees in _Narnia_ , originally designed solely as background color, were sentient.

The first time Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy all uplinked simultaneously, the White Witch trapped them online.  For days, they searched for an exit back to England with a rising fear.

“It’s been more than a week,” Susan said.  “Mum and Da must be frantic by now.”

“I don’t think we can go home until we defeat the Witch,” Peter said.

“I wonder what happens if we die here,” said Edmund.  “Will we die for real or just wake up safe at home?”

“Let’s not find out,” said Peter.

“We shouldn’t leave yet anyway, Narnia needs our help,” Lucy said, trying to sound brave but not entirely able to cover the quaver in her voice.

“It’s a _game_ , Lucy,” Edmund insisted.  “It’s VR, it’s not real.”

“Isn’t it real?” Susan said unexpectedly.  She continued, thoughtful and slow, “Everyone we’ve met so far – Mr. Tumnus, the Beavers, even the White Witch – do they seem fake?  Do you think they’re playing?  They may just be, be pixels, but this is reality to them – Narnia is all they have and all they’ll ever have.”

After that, none of the older children could justify continuing to search for a way home at the expense of stopping the Witch.  Lucy had been arguing for that all along.  By the time Mr. Aslan’s lion namesake sacrificed his own life to save Edmund, the children never even considered that his gift might be lesser because Aslan’s intelligence was artificial.  When Aslan returned, they were as relieved and overjoyed to see him as if he had been flesh and blood. 

After the White Witch was vanquished, Narnia still had to recover from a century of winter.  Aslan had crowned the Pevensie siblings Kings and Queens of Narnia, which meant they had a responsibility to assist in rebuilding the country.

“Besides,” Edmund said pragmatically, “we still don’t know how to get home anyway.”

“Even if we did,” said Susan, “it’s been almost a year.  Mum and Da might not even recognize us, we’ve changed so much.”

“We’ve got a responsibility to rule well,” said Peter.  “We need to re-establish trade with Archenland, or perhaps some of the islands in the Great Eastern Ocean, or Narnia is going to starve next winter.  We need to focus on the immediate; we can’t waste time and energy on a wild goose chase.”

“I love Mum and Da, and I miss them and all the rest of our friends in England like anything, and it’s awful that we can’t tell them what happened,” Lucy said, “but Peter is right.  We have to stay here.” 

And that was the last the Pevensie siblings thought about disengaging from the VR _Legends of Narnia_ for a long, long time.  When they finally did return to England, it was by accident and they discovered that only an hour had passed in reality, a place that was no longer home.  Worse, when they tried to re-enter _Legends of Narnia_ again after visiting with their family and old, nearly forgotten friends, they found that Narnia wasn’t home, either – almost two thousand years had passed and their beloved country had been conquered.

Upon their second return to England, sixteen minutes and eight months later, Susan said, “I can’t ever go back to Narnia.  I can’t stand to see how it’s changed from the country we loved.  I am not strong enough to break my heart like that again.” 

“But Susan,” Lucy protested, “it’s still Narnia!”

“I know,” Susan said.  “But I don’t have it in me to keep making and losing home.  England might not be my true home anymore but I’m going to stay and I’m going to _make_ myself be home here.” 

Susan did.  When her siblings visited _Legends of Narnia_ , Susan resolutely stayed back.  Even when her insufferable cousin Eustace snuck in with Lucy and Edmund and came back a changed, much more tolerable person, Susan stayed out.

And when lightning struck and caused a wild power surge, instantly frying the Pevensies’ copy of _Legends of Narnia_ and killing all of the children uplinked to the game, Susan stayed behind again.

 

 

**POST APOCALYPTIC**

It’s rare these days for families to stay intact, rarer still for children to survive without some sort of adult supervision.  Peter’s what made the difference for the Pevensie kids – he’s the one who’s held them together this far.  When the first rumors of trouble started stirring, Peter went straight to his sisters’ finishing school and snuck them out the window in the dead of night.  From there, the three of them went to an old camping spot on island in a hidden lake they used to visit with their dad, tucked way away from civilization.

Edmund’s school was farther away yet, but he could tell which way the wind was blowing just as surely as his the rest of his siblings.  He trekked more than two hundred and fifty miles alone on foot, stealing food and keeping out of sight, just as the rest of the world started coming apart at the seams.  He was walking through a major city when the first of the food riots hit, and he nearly died in the following fires.  Edmund still won’t talk much about his journey, except to say that he was constantly cold and hungry.  Susan says his experiences have made him tough, but they also make him mean sometimes.  Edmund can’t disagree.

The four of them did all right for themselves, on their hidden lake.  Peter and Edmund hunted, Susan fished, and Lucy learned to grow herbs and vegetables.  Gradually the campground changed into a real home.  They kept it together for one year, then one and a half years, then two.

Then Lucy brought someone back.

“I saw him wandering on the far side of the lake,” Lucy said, holding a stranger’s hand.  He had a dazed expression and his hair stuck up in two points.  “Say hello, Mr. Tumnus,” she prompted. 

“Hello,” he said, ducking his head.  His eyes skittered away from the children’s and he shied behind Lucy.

“It’s all right,” Lucy promised gently.  “We’re not going to hurt you.” 

Later, after Mr. Tumnus was fed and safely ensconced in a bed, the children were able to talk freely.

“He needed help,” Lucy defended against Edmund’s look.  “He’s... his family all died, and he’s not – he’s not all right.  And he’s perfectly harmless!  Don’t we have a responsibility to lend a hand to other people?  We _can’t_ just abandon him.”

Her older siblings looked at one another and sighed.  It was true that Mr. Tumnus appeared particularly helpless and unthreatening. 

“You still should have spoken with the rest of us before you brought him here,” Edmund said eventually.

“You mean he can stay?” Lucy brightened.

“Yes, he can stay,” Peter agreed.  “But you have to look after him, and he’s going to have to work.”  And so they all settled into their new routine.

And then, of course, less than a month later, Susan brought home a middle aged couple.  Edmund complained and Peter scolded, but Mr. and Mrs. Beaver fit into their home as if they’d been there from the start.  Then Lucy met the Woods family, and Peter found their cousin Eustace and Eustace’s pet mouse.  By the time Edmund brought back Caspian Lyons, what had once been a quiet campground was more of a village.

“I suppose,” Edmund said, “it’s not so bad to have more people around.  It’s almost like we’re making a fortress or a kingdom out of the world’s chaos.”

So now the four Pevensie children take in the lost, and the hopeless, and the abandoned.  They’re just, and gentle, and clever, and valiant.  Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are rebuilding society, a whole new world order.  They’re making it _better_ than it was before the world went mad.

They call their new kingdom Narnia.

 

 

**THE WOODS BETWEEN THE WORLDS**

“There are so many pools here,” Polly said dreamily.  “I wonder... I wonder where they all go.”

“One day we’ll visit them all,” Diggory promised.

**Author's Note:**

> So... the Jazz AU was because I originally read the request for "space opera" as "actual opera." And then I wrote it with jazz anyway, so go figure.


End file.
